Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington, and Matthew McConaughey Take Thunder Run

Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey will star in Freedom Films' upcoming action thriller Thunder Run with Simon West set to direct, announced Brian Presley, CEO of Freedom Films, who will produce alongside Carissa Buffel and Kevin Matusow of Freedom Films and Jib Polhemus of The Graphic Film Company. Additional casting will begin in the next week. Hyde Park International has signed on for international sales.

Thunder Run is an all CG 3D action thriller based on the novel Thunder Run - The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad, by Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent David Zucchino. Adapting the story for the screen are Academy Award-winner Robert David Port and Ken Nolan, screenwriter of Black Hawk Down. The Graphic Film Company will utilize proprietary facial-capture technology they used on West's upcoming Night of the Living Dead: Origins 3D along with the motion capture technology used in Avatar.

"We are very excited to have attracted this outstanding level of acting and writing talent. Thunder Run will be the first ever conventional war film made to utilize this revolutionary facial and motion capture technology and state of the art CG and 3D. Simon and I have developed this project over the last five years so it will be nice to see it come alive," commented Presley.

Thunder Run is the untold story of the dangerous and bloody capture of Baghdad by American Forces at the onset of the Iraq War. In April 2003, three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike, or "thunder run." In telling the story of the surprise assault on Baghdad- one of the most decisive battles in recent American combat history--this movie paints the harrowing picture of the soldiers on the front lines and the realities of modern warfare.

Freedom Films is represented by Jay Cohen of the Gersh Agency.

Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington, and Matthew McConaughey Take Thunder Run